Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

In this course

Leibniz appears in this course primarily as a foundational figure in the genealogy of computational thinking and mechanized reasoning, standing alongside Newton in establishing the differential equations that would later underpin systems modeling and control theory. The readings invoke him as part of a lineage from early modern dreams of universal symbolic systems (through figures like Llull) toward contemporary AI imaginaries, positioning his work on binary arithmetic and calculus as proto-computational tools that made certain kinds of automated reasoning conceivable. His polymathic ambitions and faith in formal systems thus anchor a historical argument about how Western thought has oscillated between treating machines as calculators and treating intelligence itself as potentially mechanizable.

Background

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist, and diplomat who is credited, alongside Isaac Newton, with the creation of calculus in addition to many other branches of mathematics, such as binary arithmetic and statistics. Leibniz has been called the "last universal genius" due to his vast expertise across fields, which became a rarity after his lifetime with the coming of the Industrial Revolution and the spread of specialized labour. He is a prominent figure in both the history of philosophy and the history of mathematics. He wrote works on philosophy, theology, ethics, politics, law, history, philology, games, music, economics and other studies. Leibniz also made major contributions to physics and technology, and anticipated notions that surfaced much later in probability theory, biology, medicine, geology, psychology, linguistics and computer science.

Mentioned in 4 readings